Donald Trump used alter ego "John Barron" to get onto Forbes 400 list

According to Greenberg, Trump, as Barron, said he owned much of the familys business and that he should be called a billionaire.

Even then, Greenberg wrote, he thought some of this wasnt true.

"But it took decades to unwind the elaborate farce Trump had built to project an image as one of the richest people in America," he wrote. "Nearly every assertion supporting that claim was untrue."

He and his colleagues at Forbes believed that Trump was merely embellishing, not saying "outright fabrications."

"We were so wrong," he wrote.

Greenberg contended that Trump has continued to do this, eventually leading to the highest office in the land.

"This was a model Trump would use for the rest of his career, telling a lie so cosmic that people believed that some kernel of it had to be real," he said. "The tactic landed him a place he hadnt earned on the Forbes list — and led to future accolades, press coverage and deals. It eventually paved a path toward the presidency."